Tuesday, October 9, 2018

WEEKLY COMMENTARY: Is Poverty Only About Bad Choices?

When I was a teenager, I remember my grandfather would often
come for family dinner. On one occasion at the dinner table, my young
sister reported seeing a man that afternoon begging for small change outside a
store in the local mall. She said she had felt very sorry for him.
On her way back to the family car, she had dropped a quarter into his
collection box. She told us it felt good to help someone in need.

At dinner, Grandfather was the first person to react.
"Folks need to stop whining and begging, and get a job. It's all
about taking personal responsibility."

My dad chimed in, saying there is something to the
"personal responsibility" narrative, but any of us can also
make bad choices in our lives. He continued,
"Self-destructive behaviors ---- such as dropping out of school, hanging
out with the wrong type of kids, taking drugs, bearing children when one is not
ready, can eventually lead to poverty in adult life."

"So true!" my mother affirmed, "yet
researchers are also learning the roots of these behaviors, and that they are
far more complicated than mere "human weakness".

My mother then pointed out there is growing evidence that
poverty and mental health problems are linked in complex, reinforcing
ways. My mother referred to a Gallop Poll of a few years before which
found that people living in poverty were twice as likely to have been diagnosed
with depression as other Americans.

It occurred to me, that if one is battling mental health
problems, or is a grown-up with traumas like domestic violence (or perhaps
witnessing a family member shot dead) aren't you more likely to have trouble in
school, to have trouble in relationships?

"Don't forget," offered my dad, "that
economic and social stress robs us of some "cognitive-bandwidth."
Worrying about bills, food or other problems, leaves less capacity to think
ahead or to exert self-discipline. So, it is as if poverty imposes a
mental tax."

"Furthermore," said Dad, "when people have an
elevated level of stress, they are less willing to delay gratification ----
they become more impatient for immediate rewards, and thus are more prone to
"bad choices." So, you can see, a person's circumstances can
land them in a situation where it's really hard to make a good decision because
they are so stressed out. And the decisions they get wrong matter much
more because there's less slack to play with."

It was time for dessert, but my mother had something to say
first: "I wonder whether America's ideology of social and economic
mobility, the "Horatio Alger" notion that people can pull themselves
up by their bootstraps, may empower some poor people but leave others feeling
like failures, brimming with self-doubt that makes bad choices all the more
likely. Certainly, self-doubt is seen widely among the poor."

Later, as I thought about our dinner conversation, it
occurred to me that what caused the poverty problem (besides a person's
circumstances) for many of the "street poor" is an element inside
them, and changing that internal element is the only way many of them will
reduce their level of poverty. Perhaps my grandfather had been correct at
the start when he thought the solution was simply about "personal
responsibility." It's just that he had been very simplistic in this
view. For example, an emphasis on developing personal responsibility is
part of any 12-Step program, which tries to confront alcoholism, but these
programs also have many other facets, including weekly meetings and peer support.

But, for society to place the blame entirely on the
individual seems to me a cop-out. Our culture is cluttered with excuses
for bad behavior. It's always said to be somebody else's fault. In
some sense that may be true, but the victim's bad choices are real and have
consequences.

So, as long as we are talking about personal responsibility,
let's also examine our own. Is it more than putting a few coins in the
street beggar's outstretched hand. Do we have a collective responsibility
to provide more of a fair start in life to all, so that children are less
propelled toward bad choices?

If the evidence is overwhelming that we fail kids before
they fail us, when certain programs would actually save public money while
elevating personal responsibility, is it time to stop making excuses for
our own self-destructive behaviors as a society?